Powerful people like to have their name up in lights. It’s not a 21st century phenomenon, either. World rulers have expressed their vanity in the most public ways possible for thousands of years.
Almost every town in the Soviet Union had a street named after Vladimir Lenin. St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad for nearly 75 years.
Volgograd in Russia went by Stalingrad for over 35 years.
We can find more than 70 cities all over Europe and Asia originally named after Alexander the Great.
Visit Houston, Texas, or Bakersfield, California. Try the whole state of Pennsylvania; Seward, Alaska; or Laramie, Wyoming, named after the French-Canadian fur trader Jacques La Ramée.
Caesar in ancient Rome liked his name in lights, too. Over the centuries of Roman rule, a dozen cities were proclaimed Caesarea, after the Roman title Caesar.
To live in Caesarea was to live in the name of the King.
This gives us a choice. We can reside in Caesarea and not live like a king, or we can choose to stand up to the standards espoused by the king’s name.
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 tells us:
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”
Our spiritual Caesarea is found in our hearts, and it spreads out from there. The name on our address book doesn’t reflect where we live spiritually or what God wants to do in our lives.
We can visit the Devil’s Bridge in Ardino, Bulgaria, and Jesus will be there with us. Devil’s Mountain, Germany, hides an incomplete Nazi military school buried in its depths; Devil’s Peak, South Africa, is more myth than devil; Devil’s Pool at Victoria Falls on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia lets us swim next to the tumbling cascade; and the Devil’s Lair in Australia is a cave filled with ancient artifacts. Visit any of these places, and Caesarea is there.
As Paul tells us, “Christ died for our sins…[and] was raised on the third day.” Every Christian in history carries the name of the most powerful man in all of creation, the Christ, Jesus, God Incarnate who walked among us and gave his life on the cross to bring salvation to all of humanity.
Let’s put his name up in lights. He’s not a 21st century phenomenon. He’s the savior of the world, and we’re named after him.
When we boast of Jesus, we spread his presence everywhere we go.
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